Better Place unplugs Big 3 plug-in efforts
Change is bad.
Too far outside of the box
“Incumbents in an industry that is slow to change tend to believe that the speed of change will remain constant,” stated Better Place CEO Shai Agassi recently. They just don’t believe “that something that big can happen in the industry.”
Thus, the idea that electric car owners could simply drive through a battery-swapping station and have their battery fully charged in less than one minute is as laughable to most major automakers as was the Toyota Prius a decade ago – probably even more so.
Consequently, are Big 3 plug-in efforts really about change, or simply about maintaining the status quo for as long as possible by building cost-ineffective plug-in applications packaged in small, basically un-American vehicles that will appease the few percent of Americans demanding such solutions, but never satisfy mainstream car buyers?
Even worse, are the Big 3 even capable of competing in “big” and revolutionary changes in the auto industry?
I remember being at GM for a media briefing on the Chevy Volt just as the run up in gas prices was heating up, but had not yet reached its zenith.
‘No one could have predicted such a run up,’ GM executive after executive stated. Yet, in the blogosphere many were warning of such a run up since 9/11, including some people that used to work for the CIA and the National Security Agency. Nevertheless, I thought it was a fair point, but a bit disingenuous nonetheless.
After a few drinks, however, one of the leaders of the Volt project said something very interesting and ironic. Essentially, he told me, America had to move to electricity long term. Then, probably without thinking, he told me that internal GM studies even predicted the possibility of the current gas spike.
But GM, and the rest of the Big 3, weren’t in the game of possibilities. While they might be able to turn the box a little to the left or the right, thinking outside of the box was – and probably still is – impossible.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Better Place has cracked the EV nut with its out of the box solution.
Ultimately, according to the battery experts, the best path to plug-in cost-effectiveness based upon the current generation of lithium technologies – which have now been around for decades – is a small battery plug-in charged dynamically.
Does a Better Place charging station achieve dynamic, small battery charging? Or does it somehow defy lithium economics?
I don’t think so. However, if a 300 mile battery could be achieved, I don’t doubt that consumers would rather pull into a Better Place Station for a 59 second charge/swap, just as they pull into the gas station today, rather than finding a charging station for a longer 80 percent ‘quick’ charge, or waiting several hours for a full charge.
Regardless, when Better Place does tackle America, don’t expect compact EVs. Instead, Battery Place is focused on bringing battery-switchable SUVs to the US.
